Where the dead lay

THIRTY-TWO

Time to open for business. This is not a drill.” That’s what Dad had said. Their latest pieces of work had done what they were supposed to, and houses were shuttered or shutting down all over town. Now it was time for them to start earning as their test case had proved they could. Dean was to meet Knute near one of the first Latin houses they’d taken, where they were going to oversee a Spanish kid starting up and working a new shake. But Dean was running late. In fact, he was doing something stupid and pathetic. The stupid part was that he was sitting in his car drinking, the pathetic part where he was, which was in front of her building. Her old building, anyway, the last place he’d seen her. She was gone now. Gone somewhere, into the wind. He didn’t know if he just wanted to see her old door or was hoping she would swing by for something she forgot… Shit, he didn’t know what he was doing. He just knew he missed her and needed to talk to her. He needed that bad. She just understood. He tasted the whiskey again. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to finish the pint that afternoon, after lunch, when he’d opened this, his second of the day, but now he knew he was going to. He had fifteen, twenty more minutes to wait there before Knute would be good and pissed and everyone started calling him on his cell. He settled in and drank. Maybe he’d get lucky

…

He was out there, that son of a gun. Setting out in his car. Just setting out there-not in the parking lot like he used to do-but across the street where he could still see real good. He was out there like some kind of stalker. Ezra Blanchard let his curtains fall shut and walked back and forth around his living room. It wasn’t a trip that took long, cramped as it was, between the sofa, his car magazines, and the hubcaps he’d been collecting for the last little while. He wasn’t sure if he’d sell them or keep them. If he shined them up, maybe rechromed them, they’d look pretty sharp hanging up in three rows of six. He didn’t bother picking up junk. He had wheels for an old Stingray Corvette, a Duster, and an Olds 442 in the collection. But here he was, like a prisoner in his own place, because he had no interest in talking to that boy out across the way. He oughta call the cops, is what Ezra thought. No, he thought, not the cops. He oughta call his nephew Andre to come over and open a big, tall can of whup-ass on that white boy. But Andre was over in Iraq. No, he had another idea: Where’d he put that card…?

Behr was sitting at his kitchen table running a barrel mop soaked in Hoppe’s No. 9 up and down the spout and through each of the cylinders of his gun. The smell of the solvent was both caustic and sweet, and it put him in mind of responsibility. Every time he shot, he cleaned his gun immediately. It was a habit, like breathing. A dirty gun was one you couldn’t count on, one that could fail you. After he’d removed the fouling, he started running a patch puller through the barrel, until the patches came out bright and white. When he finished, he wiped down the frame and handle and, done with the target ammo, filled the gun with the Silvertip hollow points. Then his phone rang.

Behr drove fast cross-town. After some muttered introductions and “sorry to bother you” stuff, Blanchard, the building manager, had told him that the boyfriend was back. “The same asshole used to come ’round dating Flavia,” he said.

“The one who knocked you around?” Behr asked.

“The same.”

“Did you call that cop who came out last time? That lieutenant?” Behr asked him.

“Nah, I just felt like calling you, so that’s what I did.”

“Okay. Stay inside, I’ll be there soon.”

Behr didn’t know exactly why he felt so motivated to help the old man. Maybe it was the fact that the man had received that beat-down at the hands of the boyfriend. That just didn’t sit right with Behr. He rolled up at the building a short time later, pulling right into the parking lot. After a moment, the door to Ezra’s unit opened, and he came out. Behr stood up out of his car, looking around for the guy.

“Hey, Mr. Behr-”

“Hi, Ezra, where is he?”

“He’s right over there.” Ezra pointed, and Behr turned to look just as a Dodge Magnum pulled out across the street, spraying some loose gravel. Somebody running always made him wonder, so Behr jumped into his car and gave chase.

“I’m being followed,” Dean said into his cell phone, feeling his heart going like a trip-hammer under his shirt.

“What do you mean followed?” Charlie asked.

“I mean someone’s following me,” Dean said again, his voice rising. He could hear the sounds of the bar in the background, some music, some voices. Things seemed quiet. “Is Dad there?”

Charlie ignored the question. “Are you with Knute?”

“Not yet.”

“What the fuck?”

“I was on my way…,” Dean said, embarrassed, “but I stopped by… her place-”

“For Christ sake, Deanie,” Charlie groaned. Then he half covered the phone, and Dean heard him speak to someone else. “It’s Dean. Instead of fucking heading to the fucking shake, he went to that skank’s place and now he’s being followed.”

“Negro please!” Dean could hear Kenny’s voice bleeding through. “Who’s following him, a cop?”

Charlie’s voice came through clean, “Cop?”

“Don’t know who the hell he is, but his head’s practically poking through the roof of his car like the Flintstones. Is Dad there?” Dean asked again. “He’s behind me, like three cars, riding my ass. I don’t know what to do.”

“Bring him here,” Charlie said. “Bring him here.”

Behr entered the bar, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He’d picked up the kid a block and a half away from Ezra’s building, and it had been an easy tail, weaving in and out of sparse traffic, staying around the speed limit, as they headed out toward Speedway and this bar he’d heard of somewhere before. Behr’s eye grazed the name of the place, the Tip-Over Tap Room, as he stopped his car. He thought he’d seen it on a napkin, or a match-book, or someplace. He didn’t have time to think it through, as he saw the shaggy-haired kid go in the front door. Behr went right after him, hoping the interview would be as simple as the tail had been.

Behr grew concerned as he got inside and noticed the place was empty and that there was no music playing or any other sound. He caught movement toward the rear of the place, and then there was a flash, as a back door opened and the darkness was cut by a slice of street light. He saw the shaggy-headed silhouette of the kid he was chasing exit and the bar returned to darkness. He realized he’d been suckered just as he felt an energy at the edge of his peripheral vision, almost behind him. He turned as the blow whistled in, and he was only able to hunch his shoulders at the last moment. Pain came hot and fast, and the strike skipped up off his upper arm and clipped the back of his ducked head.

Was it the 10-gauge? The disconnected thought raced through Behr’s mind as he went down. Am I going out like Aurelio? The ground came up fast to meet him, and he hit it and rolled and realized he was still conscious. Then he saw it wasn’t a shotgun, but a bat that he’d been hit with, and a blond-haired six-foot-plus young guy jacked with muscle was doing the swinging. The guy came around him, crouching low and winding up for another shot as if Behr’s head were a Clincher softball. Behr covered up with his arms, sacrificing them, as the bat came in and bit into his elbow, but he managed to wrap his hand around it and use it to pull the guy down toward him. He raised his foot and drove it into an up-kick with everything he had behind it. His foot connected low on the guy’s jaw. It would have been a clean knockout, had the guy not had the good sense to yank the bat back and start pulling away. But it landed all the same, and Behr saw the guy’s head turn and his knees sag.

Behr followed the kick up to his feet and found he was standing. The bat went back for another swing, somewhat unsteadily this time, and Behr flung himself forward, closing the distance, getting inside the range of the weapon. Behr stuffed the shot, wrapping the guy’s right arm under his own left, and clipped him in the teeth with a forearm shiver. The guy stumbled back against a chair and would’ve gone down, but Behr still had the arm clamped under his. Behr chopped up with his left leg in a very ugly, sloppy sweep that nonetheless worked and cut the guy’s ankles out from under him. The guy landed on the chair broadside, ribs first, and Behr heard the air go out of him and the clunk of the bat as it hit the floor and rolled away.

Behr leaned down to hit him again, when he felt himself double over, his neck caught in a powerful collar and elbow clinch.

Someone else, raced through Behr’s brain, but before he could see who it was, or register anything else, a series of knee strikes danced up and pounded his body and face. Behr felt his lip split, but his teeth held, and he was able to turn and get hold of his attacker’s body. Behr sucked his elbows in, blunting any more knees, then managed to lock his hands in a seat-belt grip around his attacker’s waist. Shooting his right leg straight out behind the man’s feet, Behr fell to the ground and let gravity do its work. The second attacker hit the ground hard, and Behr scrambled immediately for top position. He was dealing with another muscled young guy, a few years shy of the one with the bat. This one had dark, spiky hair, and Behr knew right away he had seen him before training at Francovic’s. He tried to keep his mind clear of such distractions as he went for knee on chest, but the younger man tucked to his side and pushed both hands against Behr’s knee, shrimping away and sliding free in a perfectly executed elbow escape. The younger man rolled in a backward somersault and came to his feet, and in that moment’s pause Behr saw a thing, beyond the prior recognition, that froze him. On a rope chain necklace around the guy’s neck hung a Christ the Redeemer.

Aurelio’s, echoed in Behr’s head.

The younger man turned and flew for the back door. Behr moved to run him down and beat answers out of him, but before he could take a step the batter, who was back on his feet, without the bat now, grabbed him from behind, trying to catch him in a body lock.

Behr turned into it, fighting into an underhook-overhook clinch. They struggled around in a half circle, each man grunting and looking for an advantage. Behr heard the rear door swing open, as the other young man fled, and then the front door opened, too. He heard feet, and voices barking guttural expletives, coming at him. Behr swung around and managed to drive the guy he was grappling with to the ground in time to see a fierce-looking man about his age coming at him from the back with a billy club in his hand. Then there was more yelling and the sound of boots on the floor. The cops had arrived.

“Break this shit up,” were the first coherent words Behr processed. Three of them, in uniform, had come through the front door and flooded into the place. Behr felt powerful hands yank him back, while a pair of patrolmen went past him and interdicted the fierce-looking man’s progress in his direction. The cops wrapped the man up, causing him to thrash and start screaming.

“Get the fuck off me!” the man yelled. “Sonofabitch comes in here and beats on my kids, I’ll gut him.” Behr saw the man’s coal black eyes flash with hate, and realized he’d stumbled into a family affair. The men he’d fought were this guy’s sons, and perhaps the guy he’d been following was, too. The blond man he’d thrown to the ground regained his feet and glared at Behr as the third cop, a round, stocky fellow sporting a handlebar mustache and lieutenant’s bars, worked his way around to keep them apart.

“That’s enough!” the lieutenant yelled. “Back it the fuck up.”

The patrolmen pushed the one Behr had been fighting and the father into the darkness toward the back of the room, while the lieutenant dragged Behr toward the front.

“Hands on the bar,” he said. Behr knew better than to argue, so he put his hands on the oak and assumed the position.

“Gun, right lower,” Behr said, anticipating the lieutenant’s finding it as he was frisked. The cop yanked Behr’s pistol out of the holster.

“Gun up front!” the lieutenant shouted to the cops in the back, then to Behr, “What’s up, buddy?”

“I was-”

“I don’t want to hear it. Let’s see some ID,” he said. “Slow.” Behr felt naked without his gun. He glanced toward the back of the room and saw that the father and son, both seated and squawking at the cops, weren’t exactly getting the same treatment. Behr spat blood on the floor, pulled his driver’s license out of his wallet, and let the lieutenant see his shield as he handed them over. “The pistol permit and P.I. license are all in there.”

“Uh-huh. Okay,” the lieutenant said, comparing Behr to his driver’s license and glancing at the other documents. “What happened?”

“What happened? I walked in and got hit by a bat. That guy and another guy jumped me,” Behr said.

“What bat?” the lieutenant asked. Behr pointed off into the darkness. “What other guy?”

“He went out the back,” Behr said. The place was getting quieter now. The men in the rear reduced to violent-sounding mutterings.

“You’re saying you were assaulted. Stay here.” The lieutenant crossed toward the back and spoke to the other cops, but Behr couldn’t hear what was being said. After a moment the lieutenant was back. “They say you started it. You want to press charges, buddy? ’Cause what do I have here, a bar fight?” the lieutenant said.

“Is that what they told you? It was no bar fight,” Behr said, turning from the bar, his eyes finding the lieutenant’s nameplate. It read “Bustamante.”

“Then what was it? Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?” Lieutenant Bustamante demanded. “I know these guys, they may come on like hard-asses, but they’re real quiet business owners.” Behr said nothing. “C’mon, you were on the job, give me something, otherwise I gotta bring you all in,” the lieutenant went on, in a more reasonable tone. “You working private?”

Behr was tempted to pull him aside, to let him know the circumstances under which he’d come. He even thought about saying he was Pomeroy-sanctioned on the other matter. But something stopped him, and suddenly his eye found what it was: it was that nameplate. Bustamante. The name was familiar to him, and he remembered where he’d seen it: in the pea-shake property searches. A woman with the same last name had recently bought some houses. Coincidence? Or could she be his wife? It wasn’t the most common name. Behr felt an uncomfortable sensation in his gut and suddenly needed to get his gun back and get out of there. He tried to measure his breathing before he spoke.

“You know what, why don’t we forget about it?” Behr said.

“Yeah?” Bustamante asked, eyeing him.

“Yeah. Misunderstanding, spilt milk,” he said as evenly as he could. “There won’t be a next time, but maybe I come back one day, they’ll be a little more friendly, we’ll all have a drink.”

“There you go. Now you’re thinking. Save me some paperwork and I appreciate it.” Behr put his hand out and Bustamante gingerly placed the gun onto his palm. Behr reholstered it just as gingerly. He peered into the darkness of the bar and felt those hate-black eyes staring back at him as he exited. The adrenaline was leaving him, and a dizzy head and a ringing in his ear took its place. He made his way to his car on unsteady feet and turned for one last look at the place. His eyes found the white light floating over the building. It wasn’t the moon he was looking at, but the white illuminated sign over the door to the bar that featured a tilted-martini-glass-toasting-with-a-beer-mug logo. The Tip-Over Tap Room. Then it came to him. Schmidt, the Caro boy, had a pack of matches with the same logo in his room at the Valu-Stay. What was that? He’d picked up the matches someplace? Someone had given them to him? Or had he been to the bar? It didn’t mean much, in itself, a simple book of matches. But Behr’s head began to reel, as a long slow tremor of recognition snaked through him.

He was working one case, not two.